Ukraine-Russia War Take 2
Here is what the preliminary take on the Ukraine thread disappearing is:
The site was hit with a massive spam attack where hundreds of spam threads were created. In the case where, for example, I see a single spam thread and delete it, that is called a soft delete, and mods can still see them but forum members cannot. Those deletion can be undone.
When a massive attack hits with hundreds of threads, an admin uses a different procedure where the hundreds of spam threads are merged and then hard deleted, where the threads are gone, and no note is left behind. As I have mentioned with my own experience of just soft deleting a large number of posts, sometimes a post or thread gets checked or merged accidentally and is deleted by mistake. Dealing with hundreds of spam threads takes a sledgehammer, not a scalpel.
It appears that our Ukraine thread may have gotten caught up in that recent net of spam threads. If so, it is likely gone for good. I cant say this for sure, and am awaiting comments from admins on this issue. Yes, this sucks. And hopefully there was some other software glitch that caused the disappearance, and we may recover it in the future.
But in the meantime, I have created this new Ukraine-Russia War thread to enable the conversation to continue. Obviously continuity with earlier discussions will be lost. There is no way around that. So as best as possible, let's pick up the conversation with recent events and go from there.
If you have any questions about this, please post them in the mod thread, not here. Let's keep this thread going with posts about the war, not the disappearance of the old thread.
Thanks.
Instead they're crashing their economy and chaining themselves to China, apparently with the goal to make the world more ****.
Putin has spent much of his tenure selling his country out to China, ceding land, selling energy at bargain basement prices since long before the full-scale invasion began, building pipelines that are economic losers for everyone except his wealthy friends, letting the Chinese buy up huge stakes in the LNG projects tax-free, permitting them to chop down the Taiga in the far east.
Just recently, Kommersant reported how secondary sanctions are severely hindering Russia-China trade relations,
Putin has spent much of his tenure selling his country out to China, ceding land, selling energy at bargain basement prices since long before the full-scale invasion began, building pipelines that are economic losers for everyone except his wealthy friends, letting the Chinese buy up huge stakes in the LNG projects tax-free, permitting them to chop down the Taiga in the far east.
Just recently, Kommersant reported how secondary sanctions ar
Interesting, I did not know about the scale of the Taiga deforestation or how big a part China played in it, but checked out some articles now. Pretty grim stuff.
Absolutely incredible. And still some people ITT will say Euromaidan was a "Nazi coup"
doesn't get much more obvious than this.
Hard to imagine Putin really cares about the Russian prisoners they got back in the swap. Definitely curious what the rationale for doing a prisoner is from their perspective.
Rewarding loyalty is extremely important to Putin.
Yep, I'm certainly not saying to trust Trump. It's an interesting change in approach from him though.
People have always suggested here if trump wins it will be united states business as usual. its all politics what he says but his actions was just like any other neocon president. the war will be supported
The Kharkiv offensive failed spectacularly, but it wasn't meant to take that much territory to begin with. It was mostly meant as a fixing operation to help with Chasiv Yar.
I don't think Russia can take much territory either; even now that they have a breakthrough they haven't really been able to exploit it.
If Ukraine is getting as many recruits as they claim and are able to strengthen their lines then I think Russia gives up on this appro
didn't really follow it but I assumed it was just a diversionary tactic and to open up a new front since they were winning the attrition war. I don't think even the biggest Russian supporters expecting anything out of it. IT was reported the offensive was very few solders
It is possible that Trump ends up giving more aid to Ukraine than a Dem would, but he could also cut it off. It's a big unknown, I think most of his rhetoric is mostly because Dems were in power when the full scale invasion started and republicans made supporting Ukraine a Dem issue which was just ridiculous.
Russia's goal was to get within artillery range of Kharkiv which would have forced a lot more Ukrainian units to the region, and also could have caused a mass exodus of Kharkiv which would have been horrible for Ukraine's economy. They failed completely and it pretty quickly turned into a face-saving operation which Russians were the ones who were actually fixed due to political reasons, and they had to endure horrible casualties.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cljyj9...
Absolutely ridiculous story.
I truly don't see how someone could think that Trump is going to be better for Ukraine than any dem president.
Aside from Israel, Trump has a nativist, non interventionist DNA , it's one of the few things he never flip flopped about in his life, along with a preference for tariffs and for low interest rates no matter the state of the economy.
For Ukraine in particular, Trump represents those republicans who think the democratic party, and the Biden family in particular, benefitted financially from ukraine corruption in the past.
And for Ukraine, Trump can claim it's up to the EU to finance ukraine defense and reconstruction, as part of the "we don't want to subsidize you anymore" trope as well.
Anyway , under the assumption that the senate is going to be republican, even a dem president will have a hard time to pass any meaningful financial help bill imho
I don't think anyone believes that it is a likely outcome. At the same time he's entirely unpredictable so it can't be ruled out.
Trump will support this war or they will find someone who wont miss
It is possible that Trump ends up giving more aid to Ukraine than a Dem would, but he could also cut it off. It's a big unknown, I think most of his rhetoric is mostly because Dems were in power when the full scale invasion started and republicans made supporting Ukraine a Dem issue which was just ridiculous.
Russia's goal was to get within artillery range of Kharkiv which would have forced a lot more Ukrainian units to the region, and also
you don't know that was their goal. that's what you were told their goal was. only they know they don't leak operational level plans you just hear what you want to hear. Both sides "goal" is to win the war. but not every single day or battle is a failure because the entire war goal was not achieved
That was Russia's goal.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4ng1p...
Ukraine announces the arrival of F-16s. Actually the training squadron in Romania has had them for some time, but Ukraine as yet doesn't have enough pilots trained to fly them in the numbers pledged. Still, it's something.
I think they have been flying in Ukraine for a few weeks now. I don't think they will be used for anything other than AD for some time.
If that is what is required for you to accept something then the chances of you "knowing" anything regarding this conflict is near 0, and "knowing" has lost all meaning.
You can look at things and be close enough to knowing that it passes. The bizarre insistence on these pedantic semantics are so ridiculous.
Just look at the previous examples:
We don't know if Putin intended to take Kyiv because he didn't outright say it? Outright ridiculous.
We don't know if attacking civilian infrastructure is a war crime because we don't know Russia's intent? Outright ridiculous.
We don't know Putin's goals in this war because he never stated his goals without coded language? Outright ridiculous.
I'll tell you what, I'm saying I know that was the purpose of the Kharkiv offensive and you don't know that I'm not in personal contact with Andrey Belousov, so don't say I don't know when you can't even pass your own test.
I mean its fine to have an opinion your probably mostly right. The problem is you have no source and you wont admit that it is an opinion and not facts. We wont really know untill war historians in 20+ years have all the documents. ITs fine to have an opinion until then but don't walk around like these are all facts from the info your being fed from very biased sources.
For example I have never once said Russia didn't intend to take Kiev. anyone with a brain cell knows they were attempting to take kiev to end the war quickly. What we can't know is how likely Russia thought its chances of success were. For example they could have thought it was only going to succeed 80% but were ok with those odds because if they failed they were willing to take on the risk of a longer war or made a tactical error and didn't think the west would support them this much. The same is likely with this offensive. They probably only thought it was likely to succeed (at least for the made up goals you stated) 10-20% of the time and were fine with those odds because it would also open up a new front and cause troops away from the eastern front. If they wanted better odds they would have sent more men. Russia has to know by now offensives are not what they are good at and how they are going to win this war.
When people make military decisions they don't think in absolutes. I would expect more critical thinkers in a forum about a strategy game. Obviously they consider the best case scenarios too.
I forgot the other main example: "We don't know that Russia would invade again, so Ukraine is warmongering by not agreeing to capitulate to Russia, give up their military and agree that Russia has veto rights of other countries supplying aid to Ukraine."
I did not say that you were the one questioning Russia's desire to take Kyiv. What I am saying is that there's a history ITT, and you are part of it, of casting doubt on things so close to factual that we can safely call them fact, because the facts do not support the argument that you (and others using this similar line of fallacious reasoning) want to make. All facts point towards Russia's goal being to get within artillery range of Kharkiv for the purposes I laid out. What is not supported by fact is that Russia only thought this would work "10-20% of the time and were fine with those odds", because that is absolutely ridiculous.
I would expect more from someone complaining about critical thinkers. Outrageous.
People forgot that if Belarus had helped as Putin was expecting, Kiev was in play with high chance of taking.
Kyiv was in play with a high chance of taking without Belarus helping.
I am old enough to remember Russia tying to send a bunch of "elite" paratroopers into Kyiv and most of them being blown out of the sky while still in the air or quickly neutralized when they landed. Obviously 500 (or whatever the number was) paratroopers aren't going to capture a city of 2 million people by force. So it seems there was some expectation the Ukranian govt would just let Russia waltz in and take the city more or less bloodlessly.
I am old enough to remember Russia tying to send a bunch of "elite" paratroopers into Kyiv and most of them being blown out of the sky while still in the air or quickly neutralized when they landed. Obviously 500 (or whatever the number was) paratroopers aren't going to capture a city of 2 million people by force. So it seems there was some expectation the Ukranian govt would just let Russia waltz in and take the city more or less bloodle
They had a huge convoy ready like 40 miles from Kiev but Belarus troops never materialized (the latter is my take/interpretation of why the convoy stopped, afaik there is no "official" line to explain that)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Ky....
/The convoy stalled eight days into the war, at approximately 30 kilometers (19 mi) from the center of the city of Kyiv; as of 7 March 2022, according to U.S. defense officials, the column had not moved at all for a few days/
No matter your take on the reasons, very weird events, but it counters the idea Putin didn't try to take Kiev, and also your idea that he thought it would have been super easy
